Rhoye must face Gastapar in a duel to the death...
“Do you have time for me now?” asked Rhoye of Khetaine.
Gastapar stalked forward onto the beach. The sun beat a brutal heat. The surf rolled its splashing rhythms. The crabs crawled in their clattering courtships. Surreal it all seemed, an occurrence of dream, or of a drunken fancy. But all too real the stakes.
“Well, I’ll be… The jinx!” sneered Gastapar. “From the city gaol. Am I to take it, since you are here, and not blinded with a fire iron, that poor old Coroticos has come to grief, and is no more?”
“You may ask him of this soon,” said Rhoye, drawing his longsword.
“Oh no, I won’t bother,” smirked the captain, drawing his sabre. “You have saved me the pains of dispatching him myself, at least, the bloated old lecher.” He caught sight of the gleaming khopesh, still embedded in Boucico the oarsman’s spine. “And can I also take it, since that there is Musadi’s blade cleaving my boatsman yon, that my night watch is likewise done for?”
“As dead as these,” said Rhoye.
The action of the duel had already begun, though no blow yet traded, as the rivals warily edged and circled, vying for vantage.
“I scarce have hands enough left to man the Tambor,” Gastapar mused. “I shall have to finish you, I warrant, before I am left quite derelict. Shame ‘tis that you are a red nomad, for surely you must be a competent sort, to have gotten here alone, and to have killed a half dozen of my best. I can’t imagine Musadi died easy. I could well make use of a man with skills like that. Alas, not you. No skill can outweigh the blight of ill-fortune as accompanies such as you.” He inched nearer, sabre before. “But, ere I put paid to you, like the cur you are, tell me, why? You bested the constable, escaped the press. And no doubt made off with his coin. You had your freedom. Why risk all this folly? Why hound me?”
“I told you that I would pursue you,” said Rhoye. “I gave fair warning. Your choosing.”
“What a response!” Gastapar laughed. “Who alive can riddle the brain-feverings of a cursed heathen? I fancy the scorn of the Gods wreaks ruin to your reason. Why they did not annihilate you all...? But, they alone may answer to that. Well, jinx, you may have cut up these lubbersome swabs,” he said, “though aggrieved am I you have done so, for they were handy sailors to a man. But you shall not find yourself so fortunate against me.” He whirled his sabre in a drama of bright spinning steel. “Dismayed no doubt shall you be to learn, I am hailed the finest swordsman in all Scyrasaar. Never has a knave even got a nick on me! You shall taste of my prowess afore you die. Stand, you dog, and have at you!”
Without further flourish or fanfare Gastapar struck, dancing forward a yard, his sabre a blur of shining spite. So swift that strike a snake would be shamed, and many a man slain ere parry interposed. Yet Rhoye stood quick to the threat, warding wide with his own blade, and lunging fore in rapid riposte. Back and forth the adversaries vied for the dominance, swords ringing and clanking, akin those clicking, clacking crustaceans warring for supremacy at their boots.
The first passes made, both stood at bay, breathing deep, each scrutinising the other for any betrayal of weakness.
“Fast are you, that I grant,” said Gastapar, smiling, “but brutish, and lacking flair. To be expected of a wildlander, I suppose, to fight like a stuck hog, with scanty regard for poise or finesse.”
Ere he concluded his insult the captain came on again, sabre probing point fore, poking and prodding, forcing his adversary to guard and give ground, or be riddled through at the ribs.
“Less able you seem point on,” Gastapar said. “That longsword is far too heavy to be nimble in the short stuff, I’d wager. It’ll be the death of you.” Quick he came on in straight thrust. Once more Rhoye was driven to retreat or be undone.
Relaxed in his mastery, the captain stepped back and risked a glance out to his ship. His men, who had been busy towing the Tambor back to her berth, watched on from afar, mouths agape at first slaughter and now mortal duel. “Keep bringing her in, you laggards,” barked he in command. “I’ll not be long about this.”
Rhoye stood readied. Well he credited his opponent’s confidence, the captain indeed quick and cunning, and his proficiency royally formidable. Every right had he to his swagger, unbecoming as it seemed, for doubtless his boasts had foundation. Yet Rhoye held his ground, undaunted. Never had he baulked from battle, nor would he now. He thought of Aona, hidden in the trees at back of him, safe while yet he stood, and he steeled himself, keener to die than to risk her harm. For such the fount of his courage: in truth, not vaunt; in right, not vainglory.
Of a sudden Gastapar lunged again, with a third variation of gambit, not slash nor thrust but feint, misdirecting toward hip afore wheeling up for face. Rhoye dodged, wise to the wile, though the sabre whipped but a whisker by his ear, lopping off a lock of his hair. Back he stumbled, as a following thrust pursued him. A pass of parry and riposte, a heave of blades, and both again stood at bay, circling sideways, crab-claws annoying at their boots as round each other they stalked.
Gastapar laughed. “Confound you, jinx, stand still. I’m a swordsman, not a barber. I want your scalp. Not your accurst hair!”
Again the duellists joined, Gastapar attacking, Rhoye defending. Back and forth, parry and riposte, blades ringing. With exchanges traded, again both backed off. Plain it seemed that a stalemate reigned, where a single error alone might yield the outcome. But, of the two, one proved stoic, while one haughty and impatient.
“Well, nothing is going to come of this,” crowed Gastapar, in a grimace of mockery. “My own fool fault, for fighting a wildling in a wild style. Let us see how you fare with a more civilised mode.” With his left hand from his sash he drew a stiletto, its treacherous blade long and thin as a needle. Thus he reoriented, sabre in his right, stiletto in his left, in that courtly stance of fencing favoured of the more chivalrous kingdoms. “Ready yourself, jinx. Worry not, I shan’t steal a hit on you unguarded.”
Rhoye drew his poignard, and stood likewise, weapons readied.
“Have at you!” cried Gastapar, and leapt forward in a blur, twin blades seeking heart and belly.
But Rhoye fended both, retaliating with a practised counterattack which caught the captain a moment unbalanced. Clashes of steel bruited loud, and sparks shot about, brilliant as the sun. Dwindling again to deadlock, parity holding still, both men manoeuvred back, fighting for footholds amongst the thronging crabs, each rival gauging his opponent afresh.
“And now you fence as a knight at court,” pondered Gastapar, perplexed. “I would say you had trained in service of a king, were you not a savage.” Little did he guess how close to the truth he spoke. “Mind you, ‘tis of little consequence,” he continued, glancing again at the boat towing home the Tambor, “my men will soon be ashore. How shall you fare then, jinx?”
“Why?” asked Rhoye. “Are you not up to the task alone?”
Gastapar snarled, his honour goaded. Forward he came in a fury, his attack measured nonetheless, sabre in feint while stiletto sought mark. And found one. Rhoye staggered back, swordarm stabbed and bleeding free, gouged just beneath the crook of his elbow.
“One to me,” said Gastapar. “Here’s another!”
And without pause forth once more he flew, an identical strike as precise again, the needle sting of stiletto sinking bone deep into the Khetainean’s gored forearm, a mere inch from the first. Back again Rhoye stumbled, grunting in his pain. The captain circled, preparing another. But he held off, the better to gloat.
“That will probably do for you, I’d say,” Gastapar snickered, his mockery returned. “We can keep on, back and forth, but blood only flows one way. Let us continue, shall we, see how much you have in you?” And again he came on, switching, stiletto flashing false while sabre ran true, swordpoint rattling across the sellsword’s belly, only the girdle of throwing knives deflecting away ruinous injury. “All the luck you have, jinx,” he laughed in his cruelty as he danced back, “as to be expected, given your nature. But luck will not avail you much longer.”
Rhoye looked upon his wounds, deep and running. So two more scars would be added to the tally, another page to the tale. Yet he did not quail. What effort his foe had wasted in mockery and scorn, he had bent in study, worth weighed, approach considered. And as Gastapar thrust forth again for what he deemed a finishing blow, Rhoye also drove forward, and faster.
Heretical of form his longsword swept across the line, and with a brute thwack the pirate’s swordhand was parted from his wrist. As stiletto wafted wide in feint, poignard pierced deep into gut. And for good measure on the return Rhoye bludgeoned his swordhilt backhand across the captain’s startled face, whipping him a blow which stunned him to the sand.
Down to his knees the defeated man sank, his stiletto let fall as he clutched fast the severed stump of his swordarm. Blood fountained through his stemming fingers, while yet more daubed the soft silk at his belly. He cast up his eyes in disbelief.
“How?” he croaked, more seeming in shock than in pain. “I am the finest swordsman in Scyrasaar.”
“I have never been to Scyrasaar,” said Rhoye, dry as the sun, sheathing his blooded poignard.
Gastapar let air a manic laugh, bleak and broken, as if his defeat had also fractured his mind. “Ah, I deserved that, no doubt,” he admitted as his mirth ebbed. “By the Powers, but I knew! I knew the very moment I clapped eyes on you in that gaol that I would suffer some strife or other. Accursed jinx, put a black mark in my stars. I should have gone inside that cell and gutted you myself, as I was minded, but keen I was for the tide, and to get back to my woman.” His face clouded at realisation of greater consequence perhaps even than death. “Oh, Kulira, my love...” he moaned.
Rhoye, standing off a little way, mindful that even a mortally wounded man could strike and kill the incautious, tore a strip from his shirt sleeve and bound it about his wounds. Half an eye he kept on ship and gig and the four men out there aboard, though by their inaction they now seemed at a loss how next to proceed.
Gastapar tried to stand, for the crabs were climbing his thighs even to his waist, but, too weakened with loss of blood to gain his feet, he sank again to his knees.
“I wonder,” he groaned, “if you’d be decent enough of a fellow to finish me afore I pitch over. For, I do maintain, I am mortally afeard of these damnable, blasted crabs.”
Rhoye returned his longsword to its scabbard, and caught up the sabre from the clutches of the skulkers: the captain’s severed hand was already gone, a morsel to those many mouths.
“That countryman of mine,” he asked, tone cold as the north, “who you told me of, in the gaol, who you had bound hand and foot and thrown to the sharks: did you throw him in alive, or dead?”
“Alive, as I recall,” spat Gastapar in his guilt, “I will not lie.”
Rhoye tried the sabre, assaying its balance and quality. “Fortunate for you,” he said, “that I am not likewise cruel. To the Nether, then, and tell Immanibos well who sent you.”
“And how?” asked Gastapar. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Your choosing,” said Rhoye. And with a stroke quick and clean he took off the captain’s head.
At once he started along the beach back toward where he had left Aona in hiding, calling to her to come to him. How many of the buccaneers remained at large upon Karkinosa he knew not, and he wanted the girl again at his back, where he could ward her from peril. Beneath the bluffs he stood and called, yet no answer came. Again he called her name, again to no reply. A dread crept upon him then, and a rage, and a savagery, and he felt he would tear the demented isle stone from stone in the finding of her, and what ruin would he wreak had she been harmed. Back to the bodies of the slain he ran, and caught up khopesh from corpse. And there he stood with his captured weapons, mariner’s sabre and marauder’s khopesh, and roared out to the men upon the nearing ship.
“Come not ashore,” he warned, “or the four of you will join the four of these.” Without waiting for reply he wheeled and started up through the rocks, pursuing the same path by which Gastapar had arrived.
In moments he came to the clearing and the cabins, finding all deserted. On he pressed up the path beyond, charging reckless through the rocks, eyes skinned for enemies or any glimpse of the girl. He soon espied the cave mouth, and guessed at once his goal. Without pause, weapons readied, he ploughed into the tunnel, and thus came sprinting to the shrine chamber, to the spectacle there beheld. To his delight he saw his friend spring up in greeting, and to his dismay saw the girl, lifeless and wan, lying cradled in the arms of a boy knelt weeping and bereft.
“Why, by the Seamstress of Twilight Aether, if it be not Rhoye of Khetaine!” exclaimed Astropho, beaming a broad smile. “By the Powers, man, but do you think you carry enough blades about you?”
The two friends clasped arms as best they might, for the sellsword seemed loath to set down his looted armaments. His terse greeting made, Rhoye looked over the girl.
“What ails her?” he demanded.
“Struck by the witch’s magic,” wept Amileo. “She does not stir.”
Rhoye shifted his stare to the slain witch, and thence up to the idol. Savagery struck across his visage grim. The graven image he knew not, but he recognised the leprous lustre of its cast.
“Plague metal,” he said, cold and blunt.
“What?” asked Astropho.
“Plague metal. Like as not fallen from the stars. Often it falls in flames in the frozen north, where the air above hangs thin. The old smith who taught me the blacksmith craft, at Tarodinas, he would never have such ore in his forge, for it spreads sickness wherever it goes, to men and to other metals alike.”
“The cause of the shrine sickness,” said Astropho.
“Aye, most like,” said Rhoye. He looked to the weak and wearied prisoners, now freed of their bondage. “Go out from here,” he said to them. “Take with you naught of iron, for it too will be plagued, having been long in the presence of this dross. Take no tool, no chain, no weapon, no buckle, nothing. Leave all here, and bear the girl out. Stray not far. Peril is still near.”
A few moments he waited, while the men hurried away. Locaon bore Aona up and carried her in his arms, for, though Amileo was willing and wanting, too weakened by his ordeal was he to raise her. And after they departed, Rhoye stepped close to the idol.
He knew not the name of that twisted horror, neither woman nor beetle nor scorpion nor crab, nor did he care, yet evil well he knew in its face. He tossed aside the khopesh.
“What do you intend to do?” asked Astropho.
“What should have been done from the first, ages gone,” he said. And placing his hand upon the idol, with one titan heave he threw down the terrible sculpture from its pedestal, to impact thudding upon the gravel floor. The echoes of the downfall quaked as if the mountain root would split, and rang long, dwindling into rumours of sickening, scurrying evil, whispering sly about the shadows.
“Come forth, devil, if you be affronted!” he boomed. “Sharp steel I hold here for you to taste!” But the malign echoes died to silence, no return challenge made. “As I thought,” he said. “Now, release the girl. Or, fear not, that I shall come to you!”
And, forbidding in threat, Rhoye turned and quit the chamber.
Astropho stood astounded, for to topple that mass of malformed metal seemed a feat ten men might have managed, more than one. But rare had ever walked a one quite so mighty as his friend, who could cower even devils before his will. Astropho snatched one last look upon Elgwid lain in repose, upon Kulira lain in ruin, ere he too left the lost shrine, with solemn step, and in mournful mood.
Once outside the threshold of the hateful cavern, back beneath the sun and in the fresh clean air flowing from off the sea, every one of the freed prisoners seemed to hearten and grow more hale. And to the delight of Rhoye and Astropho both, on emerging, it was to see Aona sitting up, wide awake and free of any lasting harm, the blue lustre of her eyes abrim tears not of woe but of love and joy, and the fleet chatter of her tongue atrip a tale not of fear but of daring and adventure. Amileo hearkened in adoration, laying soft kisses upon the backs of her hands, as if her very presence alone sufficed to sustain him in spite all the privation he had endured.
“I would say all is well here, by the look,” said Astropho.
“We are not safe yet,” said Rhoye then. “There are four cutthroats left aboard the ship. They must be dealt with, if we are to get safe home. Any who feels able to fight, come. We have work to do.”
Thus, ere long, Rhoye, Astropho, Amileo, Aona and three of the freed men stood upon the sand. Locaon remained at the cabins with those more debilitated, wary of the skulking crabs and his sandals. Rhoye at once began to ponder some strategy to seize the ship, ere the tides shifted and allowed the foe to weigh anchor and escape. But the pirates themselves preempted his plans, by calling for parley.
“I grant you parley,” he hollered in reply. “The four of you row ashore, with no weapons, and speak. You will not be harmed.”
Thus it was that Caedsen and the three remaining of Gastapar’s crew soon stood upon the beach, the second boat pulled up at back of them. The coxswain stepped forth, apparently elected to bargain on their behalf, yet his appeals were preceded by the warrior, in no mood for barter.
“You have seen me kill these men,” he said, gesturing the corpses lain near, “and you have seen me kill your captain,” he continued, brandishing the sabre and the authority it conveyed. “By rights, I should kill you all too, for you are wicked, slavers and murderers. But I am long years wearied of killing, and do it not but for need. Do you hold by the Articles of the Wild Main? Or are you lawless even of the pirate code?”
“We hold by it,” said Caedsen, trembling, “as buccaneers should.”
“Then by those Articles,” declared Rhoye, “I claim that there ship as my own, for I have fought for her, and I have won her. By right of might, she is mine. Does any man of you dare gainsay me?”
None dared speak.
“Then that is settled,” Rhoye continued. “There is a boat down the beach east of here, less than a mile on. Aboard is a keg of fresh water and enough food to see you back to the mainland. Take it and begone. Do not go back to Altarfaar! Should I ever see any of you there, all mercy will be forgot. Go now, and let your own Gods judge you as they see wise. Begone!”
Pledging faith to this agreement, and grateful for their lives, the four cowering pirates hurried away down the beach, over the headland of the cove, and out from sight.
“Amileo’s boat,” said Aona as Rhoye’s eyes met hers, though no reproach lingered in her words nor looks.
“Aye,” he said. He regarded Amileo. “It is your boat that I have given them.”
“‘Tis no matter,” said the young fisherman. “I have all I have ever dreamed of, here upon my arm.” And he caressed Aona’s shoulder with much affection.
“It is of matter to me, lad,” said Rhoye with stern look. “That girl you cherish is my good friend. And how will you support her, if she will have you, without means or livelihood? Dreams will not do to clothe her, nor her children.”
Amileo seemed at a loss for a reply. None was needed. For Rhoye proceeded with his own.
“Since I have given them your boat, I shall give you mine,” he declared, waving in gesture to The Silver Tambor, lain at anchor behind him in the cove. “A trusted captain will you need to helm her, young man,” he added. And, flipping the sabre hilt first, he thrust the handle in Aona’s hand, she seizing hold in involuntary response.
“Me?” she started.
“Aye, you,” he said. “Be better at the task than the last. I know you shall, lass. For I have faith in you.”
Rhoye then strode away, still in no mood for barter.
And Astropho smiled.
Concludes Thursday with the final chapter. If you enjoyed this instalment and would like more of the adventures of Rhoye of Khetaine, you might consider taking a look at my book ‘Man of Swords’ available from Amazon as a paperback, hardcover and ebook, or free to read via Kindle Unlimited.
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‘The Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab’ Copyright ©2023 Robert Victor Mills. All rights reserved.